Across North Carolina, families are being pushed to the breaking point, and utility companies like Duke Energy have decided now is the moment to demand more.
Duke Energy’s latest 18% rate increase proposal, with a punishing 14% increase in our bills in the first year, is an insult to households already stretched thin.
Like many North Carolinians, I am tired of being treated as a revenue stream for a monopoly utility while working families struggle to keep the lights on.
The hearings happening across the state are supposed to protect the public interest. Instead, more and more people see a system designed to protect Duke Energy’s profits at the public’s expense.
People are not blind to what is happening.
Legislative Republicans took control over appointments to this Commission, Duke Energy backed away from clean energy commitments, and now the company wants another major rate hike while already posting enormous profits.
Meanwhile, nearly one in five North Carolinians has struggled to pay an electric bill.
Justice Anita Earls said it plainly in her dissent to the North Carolina Supreme Court decision approving Duke’s rate hikes. She called the Commission’s actions “quite plainly unlawful and arbitrary” and warned that regulators and courts were simply taking Duke Energy “at its word” instead of asking whether these rates were fair to the public.
She also pointed out something no one has been able to explain:
Why should customers in western North Carolina pay millions more for the exact same electrical service provided elsewhere in the state?
The answer is not economics.
It is power.
Political power. Corporate power. Monopoly power.
And people across this state are tired of watching powerful interests rig the system while ordinary families pay the price.
Although the commission held its final scheduled public hearing on Duke Energy’s pending rate cases last week, I want to send a clear message on behalf of every family struggling with rising bills and every worker being told to sacrifice while corporations collect record profits.
We are done accepting corporate greed as inevitable.
Because this did not have to happen.
State supreme courts can stand up to monopoly power and protect working families.
The Republican majority on our Supreme Court chose not to.
But Justice Anita Earls did.
She stood up for consumers, for working families, and for the principle that the law is supposed to protect people — not just profits.
North Carolinians deserve affordable power, honest regulation, and leaders with the courage to stand up to powerful corporations no matter who they are. So members of the North Carolina Utilities Commission, I ask, will you stand up for North Carolinians and the law, or will you stand up for Duke Energy’s bottom line?
Caroline Sparks, Justice for NC
